Sugarcane
by love takes thyme
Summary: For a Caesar's Palace Prompt. Cirrus is cold and sharp and nobody has ever called her a sweet little girl, and she'd bet anything that only candyfloss Alma will cry when she dies. A story of the First Hunger Games and the girl in them who never worked quite right. Jagged gears don't turn well in machines, didn't you know?
1. Nascent

~Nascent~

The Games begin and nobody wants to win but everybody wants to live and those cancel out, right? Cirrus _knows_ that and everyone else only _believes_ things _,_ and they're wrong, so painfully wrong, with their pliant fluff _believing_ like cotton in their heads saying that there's another way. There's not another fucking way, there's not, and the _entire_ Bright Beautiful Nation of Panem has lost their cottontop minds if they believe- ( _Believe:_ accept something as true, feel certain of the surety of- _believe_ is for the tooth fairy and playing-pretend things like honor and dignity, Cirrus hasn't _believed_ since Daddy woke her up putting the winter presents under her bed, Cirrus doesn't believe but _finds out_ and _knows_ ) -if they _believe_ the Shiny Happy Capitol will give them a different out. This is for real, kids, hold onto your hats and strap in for the ride quick quick now it's begun, the Capitol kills men and elders and the sick and women covering their swollen bellies as if their stick-hands will keep the bullets from their babies, so why would you _ever_ think they'd stop before children? They got Mommy and Daddy and Gram and both Gramps and now Cirrus is starting the Games _knowing_ she has to win to live. The messed-up little girl with a messed-up jagged mind and tally-mark scars on her messed-up chicken bone arms counting the onetwothreefourfivesix people the Capitol didn't give a different out- yes, _that_ little girl, the one between the quarrier and the lumberjack, how fair, how very fucking _just_ that is, _that_ is the little girl who is the only one who knows how this has to go.

Cirrus has never played a game to lose in her thirteen years, two months, seven days, nine hours, ten seconds, and she's not going to start now. Yeah, she knows what that means. It's okay though, it's okay. Everyone dies. Everyone dies anyway.

When she's got five more seconds of whirling breakneck around the sun, thirteentwosevenninefifteen, she's going to run, grab a backpack, a blanket, a knife, and the entire Proud Noble Nation of Panem is going to see Cirrus Green begin the First Hunger Games.

Four now.

Three.

Two-


	2. Scheherazade

~Scheherazade~

" _Daddy, tell me a story." A little girl. Not Cirrus. Cirrus took science over stories and manuals over imagination since before forever. The little girl is Alma. Sister. The good sister. She crawls onto Daddy's not-yet-perforated lap with her not-yet-bloodied hands, little palms so soft and sweet like the inside of a dream just before you wake._

 _Daddy smiles and taps his nose. "I know just the one. Let's see now. It's very exciting, and it might scare you. Are you sure you want to hear it?"_

" _Yes! Tell me!"_

 _He hugs her tight, shifts in his chair, takes a breath, and-_

Pounding! Feet pounding, so so hard, on the packed ground like she's never run before. It seemed as flat and sensible as a program: run(loop)grab blanket in five feet(deposit aroundwaist)get knife in ten more feet(deposit inbelt) and so on, but she missed the blanket and the quarrier got the pack and she tripped getting the knife, and there's no loop now, it's all messed up, her perfect program glitched. What can she do what can she do whatcanshedowhatwhatwhat-

Nine! The Nine girl, sharp and sudden as a broken bone, and as likely to make her scream. Cirrus _knows_ that kind of face. In a flash, she sees with ice-stream clarity what will happen, it won't be quick, so much red, _who would take their time with it_ well apparently this freak, and she's _not_ the only one who's going to play this game. Programs glitching on all sides. Engine compromised.

Nine lunges, and-

" _But what did the witch do then, Daddy?" Voice like candyfloss has Alma, she does. Cirrus is a crow next to her. And it's not logical, not smart, not sensible, it's only immature and babyish and everything she's worked against for always, but-_

 _But-_

 _Nobody's ever said Cirrus was darling. That's Alma. She's never been adorable, nice, charming, nothing little girls are supposed to be. And that should be more than okay. She's not a little candyfloss girl, she's the cold hard mean pit at the center of the cherrysweet family. But just once, once_ ever, _she couldn't have been cute instead of striking? Friendly, not interesting? The one you went to talk to instead of goggle at? It's damaging to her psychological and social development, that's what it is. That's the poster she pastes over the barebones reality._

" _The witch, Daddy? What did she do to the kids?"_

" _Oh, I'm not sure you want to hear that."_

The bright side? Her vocal cords are getting a workout like they never have. The not so bright side?

FUCK, DAMNIT, DAMNIT TO HELL AND BACK, _fuckohfuck this hurts!_

Wait, there's another bright side! Cirrus now knows the fascinating details of how much blood loss results, how hard it is to stagger across grass soaked with bodily fluids, how horrifying it is holding your own guts in when a machete is introduced midst your intestines by a grinning madwoman and you cut your hands holding that machete inside because you can't pull it out now or you'll die even though your animal instincts roar in your head _get out hurt get out hurt get out hurt-_

Cirrus is screaming. Somewhere far away, her feet slip and stumble and slide toward the westward forest, the quarrier who gave her such the open-mouthed pitying look in the beginning cuts down Nine, lips stretched and grimacing not parted in sorrow, and a battle rages around the little girl who thought she'd be the only one to play. But that isn't happening anywhere near her, it can't be. There's only the box she's trapped in with the _pain_ and _bile_ and _painpainpain_ like nothing ever before, and anyone who says emotional or mental pain can compare at all to _this_ can feed themselves into a meat grinder, because Cirrus is screaming and she can't get out, she can't, she can't get out of the box.

" _That's a ridiculous story," Cirrus says from her corner and her grimy dogeared physics textbook. Daddy has just finished his tale, and candygirl Alma beams and bounces around the room like a windup toy. "There should be a lesson in it. The kids went looking for the magic house, disobeyed everyone smarter than they were, trusted the witch, and still got away with her treasure. They deserved some kind of retribution."_

 _Daddy laughs. "Ah, Cirrus. You don't have to look for lessons in everything. Maybe the lesson was actually to go and look for the magic house. If you don't, you won't meet the witch, but you'll never find out what's inside."_


	3. Backwater

~Backwater~

There is nothing she can ever complain about again. Nothing she ever had complained about mattered at all, nothing, not when Mandy Carter cheated and beat her on the huge science final, not when Zack Fields spread rumours around the district that she'd kissed him by Valentine's Creek, not when Alma got a doll bigger than she was at the holidays and Cirrus got _another_ booklet about space with facts she memorized years ago.

How did she complain? How didn't she think those little quirks of normal life were blessings and comforts, when now she's, she's had to-

Limp, sobbing and retching, into the trees. Start a fire while blood loss made her dizzy and ate at the corners of her vision. Pull out the blade- heat it quickquick before she passed out- and, fuck oh fuck, press it to her slit-open belly to cauterize it. That was it. That was the worst thing that had ever happened to her.

Sheer, mad determination kept her conscious through the pain, pain so blinding it wasn't white but something a thousand degrees of magnitude brighter, because if she didn't stay awake, keeling over and driving the machete fully through her seemed sort of bad.

She'd clenched her teeth on her sleeve and wailed like a dying banshee. It took five tries to unclench them. Now, Cirrus lies on her side with her skin sizzling and tears tracking down her face as her brain takes her on a tour through her fractured memories, and all she can think is _I want them back._

Everything that had ever happened to her had been _fine,_ hadn't been anything to complain about, because-

 _Mandy cheats. She does. And it grates down Cirrus's spine, and there's nothing she can do about it. Yeah, it blows harder than Mandy with the teacher's son on their 'study nights,' because how else would that doesn't-know-a-proton-from-an-electron devilspawn get her hundred, but the thing is, it doesn't matter. It's not even news. Five is a quiet district, and what Cirrus thought was the greatest outrage since genetically modified cats (They're perfect as they are. Who do you_ _think_ you _are, changing the greatest animals to walk Panem? They're better waking up in a dumpster than you are after a spa weekend) doesn't even ripple the surface. So Cirrus forgets. It didn't change anything. It just didn't matter._

 _Zack is an ass. Yeah, so what? She already knew that. She's a frosty flat-chested dull-eyed kid who everyone knows would rather eat ants than look at a boy and he's saying she came onto him. Like anyone thinks it's true. Right, big man he is and all he can get is an eight year old? People laughed. They moved on. The world? It kept turning. Why did she care? Why?_

 _Alma has a doll with dark ringlets and sloe eyes and lashes like splinters of ebony. It looks more like her sister than Cirrus does. So what? And Cirrus_ has _read most of the information in her book a lot, but she'd still rather have it, wouldn't she? So did she want a doll like herself, one with straw hair and narrow sullen eyes avoiding yours? No, she wanted whatever Alma had. She forgot later, didn't care, read her book, and everything was the same. What would she even do with a doll? You needed love to know what to do with one, so much love, spilling out of you, overflowing like, like-_

Cirrus is bleeding again. It would help to sew up the wound, but she's got no needle or thread, and you can't sew up a deflated heart, and that's not what she means but it's okay, it's not sunken anymore, the sameness crushed it and now something's happening, it's _coming back_ because in the Games it _means_ something.


	4. Finite

~Finite~

There is a boy three feet away from the bush Cirrus is hiding in. And that would be fine, he'd move on, she'd slime after him then _CRASHCRUNCH_ with a rock and it'd be all over, one down sixteen to go, perfect as a circle. But- she's an idiot, that's what. Dumber than dirt stupider than silt worse than waste cringeworthier than crap, and _more_ than all that, because she didn't clear away her fire, that's what. And he's looking. Looking all around for Little Miss Idiot. If he's not struck down by the flames of perdition and rendered blind with hell's fury, yea, he could find her in seconds.

Fuck. Fuck! She clenches her teeth and probes the slice across her cooked-like-chicken intestines. It's not bleeding for now. For now, for now, means nothing for later, but _if,_ if he doesn't see, she should be able to at least twitch fiercely at him without losing half her bodyweight. If he turns away, thinks the firestarter is long gone, because thank his unlucky stars the charred pile is cold, she can still leap out. Her fingers tighten around Siegemeister Genuine Igneous Co. Heavy Rock 3000, her muscles tense. Now or at no time in the past or future. She can do games. She can win. Knight to B4. Up a level, upgrade Siegemeister to that intimidating sword in his belt. Time to play.

Ah, just wait a picosecond, it's in his _belt,_ he saw the firesite, why wouldn't he have the sword out?

And, _damnit to hell,_ his district partner steps out wielding a _Huge Fucking Axe with one hand, no big deal_. The lumberjack next to her at the beginning. The woman made of beef and little kids' tears, right, _woman_ , she's probably sixteen or seventeen but let's not kid ourselves, she could be twenty-five. Yeah, the audience will love this.

"It's cold. The fire's been out for a while." The boy prods the ashes with the tip of his shoe to demonstrate their coldness. "You want to stay here? I mean, we could move on. But I mean, there's not really a danger. You've got your- you know-" He gestures at the HFA and gives his best impression of a chipmunk giggling.

HFA wielder scans the area, passing over Cirrus's hiding spot with no indication of causing her grievous bodily harm. "We can stay here," rumbles a bass tone from the pit of departed death metal. "Considering my you know, I don't think anyone'll want to get near us."

"Um, you will be sleeping tonight, right? And, I mean, when you are, someone might really want to _have_ the you know, so-"

"Braxton," reverberates 57-octaves-below-middle-C, "I'm doing watch tonight. Because if I don't someone could find us, and finding us would be-"

"Bad. You're totally right. Okay. I'll just get more sticks for the fire, right? If you want. Which you do, I bet. Okay then." Exire Septem puer.

HFA squints after him and waits for his scrawny back to get out of sight before sighing more heavily than a dark star. She flumps onto the ground, triggering a 4.9 Richter quake, and stares at nothing. Cirrus shrieks doom and destruction at her internally, for that blundering behemoth is facing _right at her._ As if the prospect of bashing her brains out hadn't been hard enough already. She can't sneak worth pork drippings when she's _not_ trembling with exhaustion, malnutrition, and suffering from Gutsfallinoutitis. God. Damn. It.

She settles in for a long wait, tapping her chapped fingers on the Siegemeister in a distracted heartbeat, and tries not to think of fresh meat, no matter what her skin smells like. And time

p

a

s

s

e

s,

until night falls, along with the Sevens' eyelids. At the present time or never.

And, lo, Cirrus unfolds, back popping like corn, and steps out from her fortress, graceful as a half-blind lemming. In one palm a rock, in the other her nails, she approaches. She halts next to the lumberjack. She toys with her weapon ripped from the earth's heart, raises it to the woman's temple, and-

Can't.

Brings it back, the point so perfectly aligned against the weak bone barrier, and-

Can't.

It has hit at the most inopportune time. _It._ Cirrus grits her teeth, breathes hard and deep, but _it's_ here. _It_ doesn't let her sleep. _It_ kept her up at night crying, Daddy and Mommy didn't understand, said it didn't happen for them anymore, but _howhowhow_ can't it _,_ it is everything and all that the human body is designed to fear. _It._ The utter suddenness and eternalness and mind _stabbingbreakingkilling_ finality of death. And _it's_ just- when she lets it get through, she can't stop, she can't stop it at all, it descends harder than a planet, and it _is._ The only terrifying thing about death isn't terrifying, it's _more,_ more than _anything,_ the fear of fireheightsdrowningdarknessblood all wrapped into a package the size and color of void, it's _forever._ That's what it is. Death is nothing without the shriveling _there_ ness of forever. Infinity, the worst and most staggeringly _impossible_ to comprehend thing that ever could be. The little bird comes once a century and sharpens its beak on the world, when it finishes a day of eternity has gone by, but that's _not_ true, that would make it a _time_ not the lack of time, if the bird sharpens its beak once a millenia and finishes _nothing at all of infinity has passed._ And life- life can't be the littlest part of infinity but _nothing_ can be, so just let life fucking _be,_ it's the only thing we have before the inevitability of _it._

So, yeah. She can't do this. She just can't. She cannot send this girl into forever one single Planck before she would have gone. Cirrus cannot play this game because nobody deserves infinity before they've had the brightest and best and most meaningful finity they can.

She sags under the weight of _I can't,_ lets escape a gasp of relief, of horror, of _I'm sorry,_ and the girl from Seven hears it. Her eyes snap open and bore holes in Cirrus's.

And the thoughts, the knowledge of _it,_ only belong to the mind. The hindbrain doesn't care. It doesn't know. It shoots through her _predator here, predator bad, stop predator,_ and her brain doesn't catch up before the rock.

And-

So very perfectly aligned after all, the bone really is quite weak there. Fascinating results, Miss Green. Let's all make a note of that.

And-

All the light and strength and _there_ ness spirals down the drain, and oh that must be a tic, Miss Green, no fault of your own, after such a wound muscle tics are to be expected, the rock may have gotten ideas of its own, and the 3000 model is so temperamental, that must be why it just keeps _hitting_ and _hitting_ and my my look at the blood on your shirt, I'm sure that's worse than forever. The grumpy old lumberjack won't have to deal with that kink in her neck anyway, even if it does look uncomfortable.

Oh, Miss Green, it's okay. We studied the hindbrain, remember? Eliminate all threats to stay safe, right? That silly boy would've killed you otherwise, and probably in some nasty way. Don't cry now. Let's get you cleaned up. That'll take a while…


	5. Insouciant

~Insouciant~

 _Alma skimmed along the world's surface like a shining dragonfly, and Cirrus's curse was to dive deep and deeper still down into worldwaste pondmuck, searching for the answers. She'd find a shard of mirror or wave-polished pebble to see a glint of truth in, but it'd fade bitter away into the endless wash. You're not sure it's a curse to think, to wonder where the fish have gone? Well then._

 _District Five recycled everything. Electric power, brown paper, tired old jokes. School assignments. An essay, in fact. Cirrus didn't care about the other junk they gave her. How the Capitol Helps Us, The Benefits of District Specialization, she dashed off the mindless minimum and slumped home with her passing grades. One, though, was like crimson colors to cattle. She just couldn't let it be._

 _Would I Choose to Live Forever? To give to_ Cirrus Green?

 _They should've known better._

 _Cirrus filled six pages front and back with why ABSOLUTELY NOT. It wasn't absurd, wasn't laughable, was so unmeasurably more so. She knew what forever was at nine, and was willing to bet the teachers didn't think the kiddies would. 'Forever,' it began in a scrawl that managed to be indignant by itself. 'If you can think there is any possible answer other than a million repetitions of a mile-high NO carved through your skull, you are literally incapable of sentient reasoning, and I know what literally means. Forever...can you_ grasp _that? I'm supposed to say yes, of course, because I'd save people from fires and stuff so it would be the Right Thing To Do, yeah?_ Really? _The people I could help would be limited, my suffering limitless. What is wrong with you? Can you be so vastly ignorant as to...' It went on in much the same style for thousands of words and made her teacher cry. Not unsurprisingly, she got a failing grade. Like she'd care. But...Alma. Dear dull doltish dunce Alma. That goddamn pet._

 _Next year, Alma Green's carefully scribed work got pinned on the wall for its Cleverness and Sensibility and Aren't You Glad You're Not Like Your Sister-ness. It ran, 'I would choose to live forever so I culd save people from fiers and drowning and help them becuse I would not get hurt,' and continued to detail all the ways she culd help people._

 _Fuck that. Cirrus didn't skim the waves. If they weren't concerned with the timelessness behindafterduring time, she would be. They could bat their wings and buzz over the lake so they wouldn't wet their feet all they wanted. Cirrus was going in._


	6. Inure

~Inure~

She thought- ha, _thought,_ like she can now. Chameleonbrain in control now, grab the reins, off we go!- she thought the trauma would rebound every cuttingredflecks _boom_ time, that she'd never overcome it. That eternity would be, you know, eternity. That _it_ would keep hitting. That she'd keep going with the queasinessX1000 filling her up and up.

Well. There was the Seven woman (not girl, would've killed you too, quietquiet she wasn't real like you), the Seven man right after (not a boy, just looked it, quiet now he wasn't scared that was _facade_ to _murder_ you), and a day later she'd refreshed herself with Sevens' supplies, used that nice shortsword, and, well, the young woman from Four should've been more careful to not be weakened from dehydration and go down that easily, so that was her own fault (young woman? hardly older than you _oh hush now, hushhush, she was bad, so bad like all the rest, you're doing the right thing sweetie_ ), and now the blood she was wiping off her hands was from the sleeping Twelve bo- _man._ And, yeah, it was hard, and it was despicable, and the stains just wouldn't rub off because when the skin peeled away it'd come back and she'd have to try again, and _it_ did hit- but. There's only so many times you can reel from the lack of time before it dulls.

(you've killed four people, you monster, beastbadtraitorwickedkiller _oh hush now, darling, it's only a dream, only a game, just knock the other players off the board and you'll make it home_ )

Cirrus is covered in blood and she doesn't know which is hers and which isn't and the funny thing is that's okay now.


	7. Prevaricate

~Prevaricate~

" _Cirrus." Cold room in a cold building and grey everywhere, greyer than ash. Ash used to have fire, redorangeflame bright as stars, and here never did. Grey of concrete, of bulletsheen. "Cirrus, tell me what you've done."_

 _The girl with crossed bony arms and ill-shod feet beatbeating against the legs of her chair offers a shifty shrug. "Nothing."_

" _Cirrus, it's okay. You're not in trouble. You can tell me."_

" _I didn't do anything." She scowls and kicks the too-high chair's rung harder than necessary._ Ow. _Would've been nothing if...well, Alby can go soak his head in battery acid. It doesn't hurt one bit. That's right. Isn't anything at all._

" _I heard that you've been getting in fights. If there's something going on that you want to talk about, I'm always here. Is it something at home? Is someone hurting you?"_

" _I'm fine. There's nothing at home and there's nothing here. I'm hungry. Can I go home now?" Vicious kick. Ow, fuck._

 _Ms. Tam frowns and arises from her chair. "Cirrus, let me see your foot."_

" _Why?"_ You got a fetish? _she bites back. The Tambourine may be an idiot like all of them but she's less disagreeable than most. She doesn't deserve a heart attack and ensuing "Oh god I'm so sorry I didn't mean it like that what's happening at home Cirrus who's having sex with you what's happening to you poor lamb."_

" _Because I asked."_

Well, gosh, there go all my objections. Eloquent as hell, Principal. _She grumpily slides onto the ground, does_ not _wince when she lands, pulls off the shoe, and holds up Exhibit One. Here comes the storm._

 _Ms. Tam's eyes almost pop out and roll across the floor. "Is it broken?" she manages in a strangly whisper._

" _No. I'm walking on it."_

" _Cirrus, that's- that's_ not _okay. Is it sprained, then? Who did that to you? I need you to tell me right now. Do your parents know? When did it happen?"_

 _Cirrus eyes the purpleblueblack lump of appendage. "It's just bruised. It'll probably heal soon. It doesn't hurt much."_ Hell, there's no escape now. Tam's eyes are more bulged-out and watery than soggy crackers in a bowl of soup.

" _I need you to tell me the answers to my other questions. This is a- an incredibly awful thing to do to a little girl. I mean, you're ten, Cirrus. Whoever did this to you may_ not _get away with it. Tell me now, please." The phone's already in her hand._

" _I dropped my encyclopedia on it. That's all, I swear. I did it. My parents know. It happened yesterday."_ Alby Drane in the schoolyard. Mommy and Daddy have no idea. Yesterday, that's right. Hushhush now, don't say it. Keep it closer than those tears are to falling down Tam's nose.

" _Whatever else happened to it, I don't think your parents know. I wouldn't let a child limp three miles to school and back. Please don't lie to me."_

" _I'm not lying. They know. It doesn't hurt much, they said it was fine."_ Three miles. Damn, it hurts, and only one and a half so far, and at home there's raking the leaves, and sweeping, and, and-

" _I think I better call them and tell them it's not fine. Unacceptable, in fact. Let's see what they have to say about this."_

" _No!"_ Damnit. Here it comes again. Don't teachers know tattling will make it worse? Doesn't she see just stomping my foot was being let off lightly? " _They don't know. They would've been too upset. I didn't...it wasn't an encyclopedia. Alby Drane stepped on me."_

 _Ms. Tam nods briskly, her battle won. "Why did he do it?"_

" _He called me rebel scum," Cirrus mumbles. "He said when the Capitol wins they're going to take me and my sister and they'll- and we'll deserve it. And I called him a supremely kickable groin and a misbegotten whimpering puppy, then he said he's going to tell the Capitol to bomb my house so he can piss on my corpse, then I said I'd knee him so hard he'd have nothing to piss with, and then I acted like I was about to so he stomped on me. Okay? That's all. Don't tell anyone, please, he'll just-"_

" _Don't tell anyone? I'm going to tell his parents so they can put him in counseling. What he did was terrible and violent. There's no excuse for it, and since you obviously wouldn't be a rebel it was totally uncalled for. I'll also have to tell yours. They need to take better care of you."_

" _No, you don't understand! You can't! They take care of me_ fine, _it was all my fault, and he'll just make it worse. If he doesn't his friends will, and they'll get angrier, and come after me more, and you can't!"_ And I am a rebel, the proudest rebel you've ever seen, and you don't understand that these kinds of kids won't wait for the Capitol to take me and Alma to- they'll do it themselves, don't you see? And don't get me taken away because you think they aren't caring for me, you can't do that, I'll have nothing-


End file.
